Check Privacy Policy

Effective September 14, 2016

Check is a Service we at Meedan, Inc. ("Meedan" "we" "us") created to help the world understand itself a bit better. So, it should come as no surprise to you that we have crafted this Privacy Policy to reflect those values and put into writing our respect for you, your content, your identity, and your rights. This Privacy Policy ("Policy") describes how and when Check collects, uses and shares your information when you use our Services. Check receives your information through our mobile applications, websites, APIs, email, SMS, MMS, and perhaps one day through our VR translator goggles. When using any of our Services you consent to the collection, transfer, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 BY license. In creating this policy we have borrowed from the open licensed (Creative Commons BY 3.0 and 4.0, or Public Domain) policies of our friends at Wordpress, Mozilla, EFF, Berkman Center, and Open Knowledge Foundation. During these halcyon days of platform and Services company profiteering from the downstream sales of your content, clicks, attention, and emoticons we are very pleased to share with you our commitment, as codified in this Privacy Policy, to not sell your Personally-Identifiable content or data unless we request and you explicitly grant us the right to do so.

Information we collect and receive

In creating an account on Check you may share with us various types of Personally-Identifiable Information, including, a name (whether actual or a pseudonym), an email address, a phone number, and personal or professional details you may choose to share via form fields, uploaded files (your CV or certificates), or free text (profile description). When you use our internet and mobile Services you are constantly sending information about your use to our servers, this is called ‘log data’. A partial listing of these types of data includes IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, information about web pages you have navigated from or to, cookie data, browser type and settings, timestamps, operating system data, device information (including device and application IDs), and browser preferences and settings. This data does not contain ‘content’ and may be stored indefinitely, though may also be periodically deleted. It is important for you to realize that your IP address could potentially be used in conjunction with other data to identify you. If you are concerned about this you may want to try Tor http://torproject.org/. We are interested in the geographic component of language data and so may request that you share precise GPS location for content submitted from mobile devices. We will only collect this data if you opt in to such permissioning. However, we may assign your words an approximate geolocation based on WiFi and IP address information. We may ask you for your permission to share some information (such as email address, profile photo, social graph) from a third party If you integrate with and/or authenticate through another Service. If you make use of such a Service the terms and privacy policies of those Services will differ from ours. When you authenticate through another Service we will never receive nor store your passwords. We may also gather translation, annotation, and communications content, including but not limited to text, images, videos, or audio, you create on the Services. It also includes the metadata that describes when this content was submitted, people you may have collaborated with on the content, and various other types of data that help us contextualize this content. We will also gather information about the clients, projects, channels, topics, languages, or people whose content you choose to translate.

What do we do with your information once we have it?

In general we collect this personally-identifying data and information in Service of: Simply offering the Services to you Improving the quality, security, and reliability of our Services Responding to your questions and communicating with you about our Services Preventing misuse of our Services We will only share this data and information: When you give us your permission to share it. When a legitimate legal request demands that we release information. Like all people and companies in a society with governing laws we are obliged to obey legal requests from a government or related to a lawsuit. Unless we are not legally allowed to do so we will notify you of this request. When we receive requests like this, we'll only release your personal information if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so. Nothing in this policy is intended to limit any legal defenses or objections that you may have to a third party's request to disclose your information. When we believe it is necessary to prevent harm. We will only share your information in this way if we have a good faith belief that it is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of you, our other users, Check, Meedan, or the public. If our corporate structure or status changes (if we undergo a restructuring, are acquired, or go bankrupt) we may pass your information to a successor or affiliate.

How secure is your data, content, and information?

Though we are committed to ensuring the integrity and security of any personal information you share with us through the use of our Services, we are realistic about the vastly complicated, hackable, and significantly flawed digital ecosystem of the Internet at both a systems and governance level that we will not in any way seek to assure you that your data is secure. The digital traces we leave on the Internet are as insecure as they are replicable. We hope that you appreciate our honesty in this matter; we really do aspire to never, ever have anything bad happen to any code or content generated through our Services. If you want to know more about this, you should take the batteries out of your phone and go to a Quinn Norton talk. History has shown that sovereign governments (and corporate actors alike) — those whose laws and rules we must abide — have surveilled, persecuted, and imprisoned people for simply speaking their truth. If you want to use our Services to speak truth to power (please do), or even just using lots of Arabic and Chinese keywords that might land you on a list, read the http://eff.org website, learn about the Tor browser, use an anonymous name, use strong passwords, and do everything you can to make your use of the internet less dangerous. But even in this know that total security is never possible.

Cookies aren’t always sweet

Like many websites, we use cookies and similar technologies to collect additional website usage data and to improve our Services. A cookie is a small data file that is transferred to your computer or mobile device. Good cookies can remember and autocomplete your username or enable you to return to a previous screen. Bad cookies follow you around the internet, watch you buy shoes, sell your shoe size data to the highest bidder who then pummels you creepy and unwanted product offerings. Life is too short for this, and we will do our utmost to ensure that our software and Services keep such bad cookies out of your digital life. If you still don’t want our cookies, you can work to disable these through browser and device settings, or by installing tools like Privacy Badger. However, note that some aspects of our Services may not function properly if you do so. Until there is an industry standard for for compliance to Do Not Track requests, we will not respond to browser initiated Do Not Track requests. We do use some third party tools such as Google Analytics, and these tools do serve cookies whose behaviors are governed under their privacy policies. You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies by going to their web site.

Global networks mean global laws

We store data on servers around the world. So, your information might reside on a server in another country, and that country might have laws that provide for different levels of data protection. By using our Services, you consent to and understand this global transfer of content and data.

Are you are under 13? Super sorry!

OMG you have read this Privacy Policy as a 12 year old, congratulations. The bummer deal is that you cannot use our Services if you are under 13. We love the fact that you are interested in our work, but you cannot and must not create an account or otherwise share personal information with us. Sorry, that sounds gnarly and unkind, but you will be 13 soon. In the more likely event that you are the parent or guardian of child under the age of 13 who you believe has submitted personal information to one of our services, please contact us immediately at the address below so that we can remove that content and delete the account.

Will we ever change this Privacy Policy?

Yes, we may from time to time change this policy. This Privacy Policy page will always reflect the most recent and the legally binding version of our policy. If we feel the changes are substantial, we will blog about and/or message you directly about this change. Even if you do not receive or see such a message or post, your continued use of the product or Services after the effective date of such changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes. We will always post an effective date at the top of the page. Since the goal of this Privacy Policy is, in part, to build the trust and respect of you, the user, we welcome any ideas you have for improving this policy. Thanks very much for using our tools. hello@Meedan.com